What is suet?

Q: Please explain the place of suet in bird feeding. Jack Cunningham, Shippensburg.

A: Suet is beef fat. At one time not too long ago, it was specifically raw beef fat, while tallow was the term for beef fat that had been rendered, which involves melting the fat and allowing it to re-solidify into a form with improved storage possibilities.

Regardless of the terminology, suet is high in body-warming and body-fueling calories. An ounce carries about 190 calories.

Suet also is high in protein.

Birds will make an advantage of any animal fat they find, such as on animals killed on roadways, by other animals, and by hunters.

However, most backyard birders are more familiar with the blocks of suet they stuff into wire baskets and mesh bags as part of their bird feeder array.

While nothing any of us can do in our backyards will help more than an individual bird here or there to survive a winter it would not have survived without our hand-outs, suet feeders are widely portrayed as the "next step" in bird feeding, the move beyond simply filling a bin or tube feeder with seed.

A wide variety of birds will visit a suet feeder, including some that usually do not eat seeds.